1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for the production of workpieces, in particular for the complete production of complex workparts.
2. Description of the Related Art
For the manufacture of workpieces, in particular workpieces with different successive machining steps, it has hitherto been necessary to rechuck the workpieces for the individual machining steps or, if appropriate, to transfer them to another machine tool, which increases the amount of work involved and is detrimental to precision.
For the manufacture of complex workparts, in other words assemblies made up of several parts, it is known to form the blanks of these workparts from a starting material by primary forming or reforming, so as then, via the procedural steps of separating, joining, coating and the operation for changing material properties, to bring about the final state and the material properties necessary for this. In this connection, special equipment in the form of machine tools is used for each of these procedural steps. The interlinking of the work operations on the individual machines is in this connection performed manually or automatically. In the case of manual linking, the amount of work involved is considerable, and, in the case of automatic linking, production lines with a considerable space requirement are frequently necessary.